The Magic: The Gathering EDH deck Turtle Power features a terrifying Shredder card which can dish out an unpleasant amount of damage in a single turn. Shredder, Shadow Master is a 5/5 for five mana, who causes an opponent to lose half their life when he whacks them.
So he's essentially Unstoppable Slasher in the command zone, but here's where it gets scary. Shredder, Shadow Master basically has Myriad. When he attacks, you create a temporary non-legendary copy of him attacking each other opponent.
So against an open board, Shredder, Shadow Master could deal 5 damage to each player, then make them all lose half their life. If they were all on starting life totals that would be 23 damage each, or 69 damage in the turn. Nice!
Like many other cards in the TMNT Commander precon deck, this version of Shredder is a video game reference. In multiple NES games, the Shredder boss fight involved the ninja making shadow clone versions of himself. But we're far more interested in how Shredder might work in the command zone.
The main question for a Shredder, Shadow Master deck is how we can take advantage of all that life loss. Exquisite Blood or Bloodthirsty Conqueror are obvious choices, ensuring we can stay alive while quite clearly positioning ourselves as the archenemy of the table.
Along with ways to gain life, there are a lot of cards that let us win on the spot. We're talking about the likes of Bloodletter of Aclazotz, Wound Reflection, or Archfiend of Despair. Blitzwing, Cruel Torment can only take down one opponent per turn, but hey, that's still pretty good!
It's all very well thinking about how to take advantage of all that life loss, but we actually have to connect to trigger it. Since Shredder doesn't come with any built-in evasion, facilitating that is going to be an important component of his deck.
There are lots of ways to make the commander unblockable, from Rogue's Passage to Brotherhood Regalia. The token copies are a little trickier, but how about Cover of Darkness? Useless sometimes, but a lot of matchups aren't going to have much defense against Fear.
Of course, like with many deadly mono-black legends, the real problem with a Shredder, Shadow Master deck is that he's too scary, but doesn't provide value like card draw or bodies. When you plonk this guy down on the field your opponents are liable to send removal his way immediately, even when someone else is a bigger threat. Therefore, he might be a better fit in the 99 of some other deck, like Jin Sakai.
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